FA Appeal Letter Questions

I have a similar question. My son received no merit from his first choice school but has received very generous merit from two higher ranked schools. For all three of these schools he applied early action with no SAT scores. He was able to sit for the Dec 5 SAT and scored above the 75th percentile for all the schools. Particularly for the school which did not give any merit (their financial aid package has not come out yet but unlikely to get much) should we approach admissions about his SAT scores and/or show the merit scholarships from the other schools? I hate to be pushy and they were very specific that merit awards were included in the acceptance letter.

Thanks for any advice!

You should start your own thread, so as not to hijack OP’s. It would be helpful to know the schools involved…but yes, I would share the SAT score with the no merit school (he should do that in his portal or by sending the official score report), and then follow up with his AO. Only after that step would I share the other merit awards.

Are they public? In state? OOS?

You can try, but don’t expect much, if anything. Merit awards are used as an enticement to students who they want to poach from other schools. The general “rule” is that the more selective the school is, the less likely a student is to get merit, and/or the fewer merit awards the school is likely to offer.

As far as showing this school merit awards from other schools, they are not likely to find that persuasive, but maybe if the other schools are of equal caliber to the one in question, maybe they will consider it. If the other schools are not at the same level, there isn’t much incentive for the top choice school to offer merit to your child.